{
  "id": "top.upper",
  "term": "top",
  "sense": "upper",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 13,
  "arena": "EmergenceLexicon",
  "domain": "general",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "the part of a thing that is on the side that is up",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "part.relation",
      "side.surface",
      "relevance.core"
    ],
    "interaction": "when a part of a thing is on a side that is up, relevance.core determines that this alignment matters, making that part the top",
    "novel_properties": [
      "positionally salient part",
      "directional prominence",
      "contextual dominance"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Mount Everest's summit rises 8,848 meters above sea level, the highest point on Earth's surface.",
      "domain": "geography"
    },
    {
      "text": "The lid of the International Space Station's Zvezda module was removed during a 2001 spacewalk to install new equipment.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "In chess, the white queen starts on a white square at d1, the top row from her player's view.",
      "domain": "games"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "side.surface",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "cover.object",
    "head.body-part"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "top",
    "topped",
    "topping",
    "tops"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "factual",
      "note": "relevance.core was added because the determination of 'top' depends on a parameter of directional relevance; without it, the upward part would not emerge as significant. The definition was factually i"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-top.upper"
}